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How Warcraft Arclight Rumble Could Prove the Haters Wrong

29K View2022-05-10

Blizzard Entertainment revealed its next major foray into mobile gaming with the announcement of Warcraft Arclight Rumble last week. This colorful title pulls in classic characters and locations from the Warcraft strategy games (as well as the MMO World of Warcraft) and shrinks them down to phone screens. The real-time strategy of the classic Warcraft games has been reimagined as faster-paced, more chaotic, tower defense-inspired gameplay that seems to share some similarities with Clash Royale.

After months of buzz and buildup, the fan reaction to the announcement has been more than a little lukewarm. Over on the World of Warcraft subreddit, comments have ranged from “Yep, it’s a mobile game” on the more positive end, all the way to suggesting that “there would have been riots in the streets” if the game had been announced on-stage at Blizzcon. One disappointed fan called Arclight Rumble “the most generic mobile game.”

But are these fans right to be disappointed already? Putting aside the (very important!) fact that almost no one outside of Blizzard has actually played Warcraft Arclight Rumble yet, is this game really doomed from the start? Call us naive optimists, but we don’t think so.

Here are four ways that Warcraft Arclight Rumble could surprise even the most skeptical Warcraft veterans and turn into a smash hit.

1. Strategic Depth

Let’s not kid ourselves. No one is expecting a mobile game, especially one with this specific style and presentation, to match the tactical intensity of the PC strategy games that Arclight Rumble is based on. The core Warcraft games are three of the best, most influential, and most infinitely replayable strategy games ever made. This mobile spin-off is extremely unlikely to deliver on that level.

But just because it cannot match legends of the genre does not mean that it cannot be a satisfying, challenging strategy game. Early previews suggest that Warcraft Arclight Rumble will employ a light rock-paper-scissors dynamic between melee, ranged, and flying units. That’s a completely solid base to build on, but with more than 65 minis in the game at launch—and presumably plenty more to be added in the future—we’re hoping that there will be plenty of wrinkles to the formula leading to multiple viable builds and interesting choices throughout each match.

We’re especially interested in the idea of leaders, the 12 iconic characters who will head up Arclight Rumble’s armies and change the course of each match with powerful special abilities. If Blizzard really wants to ensure that the game has a satisfying level of strategy, they’ll need to make sure that picking a leader doesn’t lock you into a single, unchanging game plan. For example, Rend Blackhand has an ability that decreases the cost of flying troops, but there should be multiple potential ways to successfully put together a Rend army rather than only one “right” way to play with that leader.

2. Strong Personality

Speaking of leaders, Warcraft Arclight Rumble has the advantage of a built-in franchise that is already widely beloved. Even if you’ve never played a Warcraft game, established characters like the proud mage Jaina Proudmoore, the villainous necromancer Baron Rivendare, and the noob-killing gnoll Hogger should have a palpable sense of history and identity right from the start.

Though many have criticized the simplified, generic art style of Arclight Rumble, the clean lines of the action figure-esque characters should help make them easy to immediately discern even on chaotic battlefields. And if Blizzard’s work in Hearthstone is anything to go by, the studio knows how to expand on existing characters in a way that really takes advantage of their entrenched characteristics, pleasing existing fans while also quickly selling new audiences on these heroes and villains.

If we have one wish regarding how the game handles characters, it would be for some actual story to go along with these big characters. We know that Warcraft Arclight Rumble will feature a PvE campaign in addition to co-op and PvP modes. However, it remains to be seen if that campaign will have much in the way of narrative. Here’s hoping that Blizzard can put together some fun, silly scenes featuring our favorite Warcraft characters in figurine form.

3. A Reasonable Economy

Free-to-play games have to make money somehow, but we have been pleasantly surprised by Warcraft Arclight Rumble’s straightforward approach to monetization so far. While many who watched the game’s reveal mistakenly assumed that it would be a gacha system, where players spent money for rolls to get random units, the game will actually be using a system where players can buy whatever specific units they want. There will not be loot boxes or randomized rolling at all, apparently.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there won’t be a way to spend money. To purchase the units they want, players will either need to play a bunch of the game and save up the coins needed, or they’ll need to pay real money for those coins. Notably, while Arclight Rumble will feature several different resources that players gather to power up units and leaders, coins will be the only currency used to purchase units and the only currency purchasable with real money; this isn’t one of those complex monetization schemes that seems designed to confuse players into wasting money without realizing it.

Oh, and Warcraft Arclight Rumble definitely won’t be pay-to-win either. While players could use coins to purchase XP tomes to level up their units faster, those levels won’t make a difference for competitive play. In PvP modes, units will have their stats normalized to ensure a fair and balanced experience, regardless of how much grinding or wallet opening one side has done.

Obviously we won’t really know how good the monetization for this game feels until it’s in our hands, but all signs are pointing in a positive direction so far. We’re hopeful that Blizzard can strike a balance between the need to make money and the ability to provide a fun, satisfying experience to fully free-to-play players. Just please don’t throw in any surprise money sinks right after launch.

4. A Truly Mobile-Optimized Experience

Warcraft Arclight Rumble isn’t Blizzard’s first mobile title—that honor goes to Hearthstone, and it will also be beat out by Diablo Immortal, which launches June 2. However, it may be the first Blizzard game that really manages to feel crafted for mobile from the ground up.

Don’t get us wrong. Hearthstone is a fantastic phone experience that we’re happy to have, but it was built as a digital card game first and foremost, which means matches that can stretch into uncomfortably long lengths for mobile play. And Diablo Immortal looks amazing, but it’s also very much a mobile adaptation of a type of gameplay popularized on PC.

Though Arclight Rumble uses the Warcraft IP and has some Warcraft-adjacent strategy elements, it appears to be something created to take advantage of the strengths of mobile as a platform. From its vertical level layout to the brisk, one- to five-minute pace of matches, it sounds like the kind of thing we’ll be happily able to pull out of our pockets and get a game or two in while we’re on the go without feeling like we’re being rushed or can’t fully enjoy ourselves.

For its part, Blizzard has been adamant that it is not planning to bring the game to PC right now. That doesn’t mean that a PC port will never happen, but even if it does at some far-flung point in the future, it will not change the fact that Arclight Rumble was clearly created to be a mobile game, and that attitude should increase its chances of success on mobile platforms.

So what do you think? Do you still believe that Warcraft Arclight Rumble is a bad idea, or are you willing to give it a chance? Let us know in the comments.

Warcraft Arclight Rumble is planned for launch later this year. Stay tuned to TapTap for more coverage as launch approaches.

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